Day residue*

*Freudian term intended to reflect my growing conviction that blogging can have a similar function to dreaming.

1) TAUTOLOGY OF THE DAY

'... the ugly side of binge drinking ...'


2) FRIDGE MAGNET OF THE DAY

'WE CHILD-PROOFED THE HOUSE ...
... but they keep getting back in.'


3) THE TRIUMPH OF THE IDEAL OVER THE REAL

Shopping list: margarine, Johnson's facial wash, cat litter, Vegemite

Actual shopping: Elizabeth George's new Thomas Linley novel Careless in Red, Robin Bradley's Australian Wine Vintages 2008, 1 bottle Parker Coonawarra Estate Terra Rossa cab sav, 1 bottle Pike & Joyce pinot, homemade potato gnocchi, panforte from Siena and two chicken micro-roasts (spinach and garlic).

As T.S. Eliot might have said, if he had been a different kind of person: 'Between the Shopping List and the Afternoon / falls the Sunlight.' But what the cats are going to pee in is anybody's guess.


My philosophy of blogging, which I expound briefly here lest my psycho-troll come back to excoriate me once more for writing about my personal daily life, is that the details of one's personal daily life exist along a continuum with big abstract issues in public life (examples from things currently in the news: buying petrol; one's relationship with one's adolescent children), and that one writes about one's daily life in the hope that those who read will see in it fragments of themselves and their own lives, and will recognise their kinship with the rest of humanity in the tiny mirrors of personal experience.

And that's what I value most in other people's blogs. If I want good commentary on public affairs I can get it from experienced, knowledgeable commentators via an assortment of media from all over the world, online or off. But I can't catch the flavour, the immediacy, the Zeitgeist or the rich, dense micro-detail of people's daily lives anywhere but here in the blogosphere.